Erik Breukink, who came close to winning the 1988 Giro, took the lead after the stage 10 time trial. He lost the maglia rosa in stage 15, the Queen Stage with five major passes. It was raced in cold, foggy rain, and Breukink lost more than six minutes because of hunger knock. Laurent Fignon, who had suffered several years of poor form, captured the lead, which he kept to the end.

Greg LeMond, who had had his own problems becoming competitive, astounded everyone with a second place in the final time trial. LeMond went on to win the Tour de France and the World Championships.

This excerpt is from "The Story of the Giro d'Italia", Volume 2. If you enjoy it we hope you will consider purchasing the book, either print or electronic. The Amazon link here will make either purchase easy.

VincenzoTorriani, the grand old patrono of the Giro, was in failing health. Since 1975 he had been collaborating in running the Giro with Neapolitan lawyer Carmine Castellano, Castellano’s assistance being limited at first to handling the logistics of southern Giro stages. Castellano moved to Milan in the 1980s and became more deeply involved in organizing the race. Although Torriani was credited as co-director though 1992, Castellano actually took over running the race in 1989. In the later years of Torriani’s tenure, the Giro had opened up to become an important international race. Under Castellano, during the mid and late 1990s, the Giro would again become more of an Italian competition with fewer of the big international teams riding.

While Castellano was effectively in charge, Torriani hadn’t gone home just yet. When he phoned Laurent Fignon to entice him to ride the 1989 Giro, he told Fignon that it was, “one of the toughest in history”. The 1989 edition was indeed loaded with mountains, plus days of heavy roads and again was run without a rest day. World Road Champion Maurizio Fondriest said of the 1989 route, “With a course like this, Moser would never have won.”

After winning the Tour for a second time in 1984, Fignon was plagued by injuries and went into a deep decline. In 1987 he began to recover and in 1988, beating Fondriest in a two-up sprint, he won Milan–San Remo. In 1989 he astonished the cycling world with a second consecutive Milan–San Remo victory. His squad, however, was a shadow of the powerful team that had supported him in the early 1980s. He and his director Cyrille Guimard now owned the team and Fignon wrote that Guimard had become penny-wise and pound-foolish in his management which was reflected in the reduced quality of the team and support staff.

Torriani pulled out his checkbook and was able to induce Fignon to return to the Giro, but the Frenchman had no trust in Torriani, calling him the “same old bandit”.

Hampsten’s 7-Eleven team also returned, but their real goal was the Tour in July. Looking at the 3,418-kilometer, twenty-two stage race, Hampsten told Fignon that this race would not be won by the strongest man in the peloton, but by the smartest.

After his abortive 1988 attempt to ride the Giro, LeMond returned with a new team, ADR, a squad made largely of Classics riders and generally unsuited to Grand Tours. LeMond’s fitness for shorter races was tolerable: he came in fourth in the March two-day Critérium International. A three-week race would be an entirely different challenge.

After mass defections to other teams at the end of 1988 season, Alfa Lum found itself without riders. Maurizio Fondriest, for instance, moved from Alfa Lum to Del Tongo after winning the World Championship. In a perfect deus ex machina, a solution presented itself to the team management. The year before, the Soviet Union relaxed its ban on its riders turning pro. Alfa Lum pounced and signed up the cream of Russian cycling and instantly had a squad of fine riders. Alfa Lum’s entry into the 1989 Giro represents a giant step in the mondialization of professional cycling.

With a Sicilian start followed by stages taking the peloton first to the Dolomites and then the Alps before heading to a finish in Florence, 1989’s route left little of Italy unvisited.

After the three Sicilian stages, Contini led and his Malvor teammate Flavio Giupponi, fourth the year before, was sitting 15 seconds back, in third place. That third stage was a 32-kilometer team time trial and Fignon’s weak Super U squad was seventh, a minute and a half slower than winner Ariostea. Hampsten’s 7-Elevens were sent to the ground after a black cat picked a bad time to cross the road, making the team second to last, more than three minutes behind Ariostea.

The southern mainland stages, though hilly, produced no changes to the standings until the eighth stage which finished atop the Gran Sasso d’Italia. Marino Lejarreta, Erik Breukink and Colombian Luis Herrera, winner of the 1987 Vuelta, jetted off the front, gaining six seconds over the main body of contenders. Breukink was in pink by a single second over Acácio Da Silva.
The first individual time trial was at the Adriatic coastal town of Pesaro. Polish rider Lech Piasecki, a time trial specialist, won the 36.8-kilometer stage, but it was Breukink’s second place that really mattered. Fignon created no fear in his competitors (but apparently a little in his director Cyrille Guimard who expected better) with his eighth place, a half minute slower than Breukink. Fignon pronounced himself satisfied with the effort as it was his best time trial since 1986. Roche looked good with a third place that was only 8 seconds slower than the Dutchman’s.

Probably no one at the time was aware that history was being made, but the winner of the twelfth stage was 22-year-old neo-pro Mario Cipollini. That was the first stage win in a long and prolific career that would later see him try to break Alfredo Binda’s record of 41 Giro stage wins.

Mario Cipollini wins stage 21 in Mira

Leaving Padua, stage thirteen was a rainy trip to the top of Tre Cime di Lavaredo. At twenty kilometers to go, Herrera blasted off. Fignon said it was an almost exact replay of Herrera’s attack on l’Alpe d’Huez in the 1984 Tour de France and he got the same orders from Guimard, “Stay put!” Guimard surely feared Fignon’s blowing up while trying to chase one of the best specialist climbers ever. Herrera rocketed up the steep mountain, leaving a grumbling Fignon exactly 1 minute back with Breukink a further 4 seconds behind Fignon. The result of Herrera’s attack was Breukink’s remaining in pink with Fignon second at 53 seconds.

The tappone arrived and what a queen stage it was, with five major passes: Giau, Santa Lucia, Marmolada, Pordoi and the Campolongo. The finish was in Corvara, at the bottom of a short but twisty descent from the summit of the Campolongo. It was a horrible day in the mountains with dense and dangerous fog, snow, rain and temperatures near freezing. Fignon, who normally rode poorly in cold, wet weather, consented to having his entire body massaged with an extremely hot embrocation. The hot liniment put him in misery until the stage started, but he said he barely noticed the cold once he got going. He did several probing attacks and finally went hell-bent for leather on the Campolongo, taking a few riders with him, including stage winner Giupponi.

Breukink lost six minutes after going weak from hunger while Herrera crashed on the Marmolada. Fignon was the maglia rosa with Giupponi second at 1 minute 50 seconds and a now-interested-in-the-Giro Hampsten third, 2 minutes 31 seconds behind the Frenchman.

The terrible weather kept coming. The sixteenth stage was to have both the Tonale and the Gavia passes, but amid cries from the Italian press that Torriani was favoring Fignon by running the stage despite the bad weather, the stage was cancelled. Fignon was actually in trouble with an old shoulder injury making climbing in the cold almost impossible. But given his history of not only favoring Italians, but specific Italians, the accusation that Torriani was working to help a Frenchman win the Giro seemed strange. Furthermore, he had already confided to others that he hoped Giupponi would win.

For the moment, Mother Nature was on Giupponi’s side. The 10.7-kilometer timed hill climb up Monte Generoso, just over the border in Switzerland, was held under overcast skies. The day was cool enough to make riding up the mountain torture for Fignon. Herrera won the stage and all of Fignon’s competitors did well. Hampsten was third, only 35 seconds slower than the Colombian rocket. Roche and Giupponi were another half-minute behind. Fignon was seventeenth, 1 minute 45 seconds off Herrera’s pace.

There were two hilly stages in Liguria and Tuscany and they might have spelled doom for Fignon, who was struggling. And then the worst possible thing for Giupponi happened, the weather turned warm and Fignon revived. Fignon mounted an attack on the Passo di Cento Croci, but had to slow because the lead motorbike wasn’t moving fast enough. He led out the sprint, won the stage, and took back 10 seconds.

Laurent Fignon in pink with Gianni Bugno. Might be after stage 21

Another five rated climbs awaited the riders in the penultimate stage, and this time Fignon came close to losing the race. He was marking Giupponi and while following him on a descent, crashed with Belgian Claude Criquielion. By this point Fignon’s exhausted team was in tatters, leaving him without support when he needed it most. Fignon said Giupponi and Hampsten used the opportunity of the crash to attack. Fignon had no choice but to straighten his handlebars and go after them, which he did, catching them after a ten-kilometer chase. Showing that there was no damage from the crash and chase, Fignon won an intermediate sprint, snaffling up five precious bonus seconds.

Gianni Bugno then took off and no one saw him until the end of the stage, but Fignon was third at the finish in Prato for another 3-second bonus. Going into the final stage, a 53.8-kilometer time trial finishing in Florence, Fignon had a 1 minute 31 second lead over Giupponi, who was waging a never-say-die battle down to the last stage. The last two stages were so hard, fifteen riders who thought they were going to make it to the end either retired or were eliminated.
Lech Piasecki won the time trial, but second place was a shock. It was Greg LeMond, more than a minute ahead of third-place Giupponi. He had been suffering like a dog almost the entire Giro, sometimes barely making it to the stage finish before the time cut-offs. Desperate and miserable, he called his wife, Kathy, in Belgium and worried that he might not be able to continue. She told him to tough it out and then flew down to Italy to give him support. LeMond continued to flog himself and towards the end he finally began to find some of his old form.

And Fignon? He came in fifth, 16 seconds slower than Giupponi, good enough to clinch the Giro. He was only the third Frenchman to win the Giro, after Anquetil and Hinault, and as of this writing no Frenchman has won it since.

Merckx thought that without his big time loss in the stage three team time trial, Hampsten could have been the 1989 winner. He certainly would have been in the fight.

Both LeMond and Fignon were back. Neither rider ever again found the extraordinary magic of the mid 1980s, but they were both so fabulously talented that even a diminished Fignon and LeMond were still better riders than anyone else.

After the Giro, while Fignon wanted to do nothing more than celebrate his Grand Tour comeback, a grim-faced Guimard insisted upon being the skunk at the picnic. Guimard was already planning their July Tour de France campaign and warned, “LeMond will be up there at the Tour.”

Fignon was dumbfounded that LeMond, who had been nowhere for three weeks of the Giro, had ended up taking second in the final time trial. About Guimard’s prophetic hand-wringing, Fignon wrote, “We all know what happened in July, 1989.” Not only did LeMond win the Tour that July, he became World Champion, outsprinting one of those Alfa Lum Russians, Dimitri Konyshev.